In the early 1600s, pioneering astronomer Johannes Kepler put forth his three laws of planetary motion, which, for the first time, provided an accurate and evidence-based description of the movement of the Solar System's planets around the Sun. By the end of the century, Isaac Newton followed Kepler's example with three laws of his own, describing the relationship between an object and the forces acting on it, thus laying the foundations for classical mechanics. Almost exactly three hundred years later, Carlo M. Cipolla, a professor of economic history at the University of California - Berkeley, introduced a set of laws...

Hillary Clinton’s most trusted ally was worried about her boss’ use of a private email server after Clinton missed an important phone meeting with a “foreign minister” because her email confirming the call went to her spam folder, according to documents released Wednesday. “She missed the call because . . . I never got the email giving us the signoff to do it [the meeting]. So she wasn’t able to do her job, do what she needed to do,” Huma Abedin testified Tuesday during a deposition in a lawsuit filed by a government watchdog. Abedin, Clinton’s top aide when she...

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser apologized Thursday morning for the city's handling of a mild snowfall the previous night that snarled traffic. "We should have been out earlier with more resources," Bowser told reporters during a press conference, stressing that officials have been preparing for the weekend storm. In a tweet, Bowser expressed sorrow, saying "the District failed to deploy the necessary resources in response to the snow" on Thursday evening and "for that I am sorry." "We are sorry for an inadequate response," Bowser told reporters at the news conference. Residents reported major delays in their commute home as...

Jeb Bush and his allies have now spent approximately $20 million in TV ads in the 2016 presidential race - more than twice as much as any other candidate or outside group, according to ad-spending data from NBC News partner SMG Delta. And they have little to show for it, will poll numbers for Bush currently stuck in the single digits both nationally and in the early states. The pro-Bush Super PAC, Right to Rise, has spent $19.5 million in TV ads in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, while the campaign has spent an additional $438,000.

When Barack Obama was a newbie president, there was no shortage of ambition or lack of confidence in the government he was about to lead. Government should be seen as a force for good, not evil. Sure, he told us, it needed to be "smarter and better," but that could—and would—happen under his watch. Instead, the President is living his own version of "Alice Through the Looking Glass": staring down a rabbit hole of government bureaucracy and inefficiency. The government he has studiously tried to grow, manage and change has become his own personal nemesis. All of which makes you...

Does IQ correlate with power? How many powerful people in the U.S. are actually geniuses, and how much does intelligence really affect success? In one of my research papers published last year, Investigating America's Elite, I set out to address these questions. I collected data on some key groups that greatly influence society: Fortune 500 CEOs, billionaires, federal judges, Senators, and House members. Individuals were deemed to be in the top 1% of ability if they attended an undergraduate or graduate school that had extremely high average standardized test scores that put the typical person well within the top 1%....

A Journal Sentinel investigation uncovered mistakes and failures in an undercover sting in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – stolen guns, sensitive documents lost, wrong people charged and a burglary of the sting storefront. ATF agents have lost track of dozens of government-issued guns, after stashing them under the front seats in their cars, in glove compartments or simply leaving them on top of their vehicles and driving away, according to internal reports from the past five years obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Agents left their guns behind in bathroom stalls,...

San Diego Judge Gary Kreep, a conservative legal activist who led a failed fight to challenge President Obama’s citizenship, has been exiled to traffic court after several Superior Court rulings favoring defendants’ constitutional rights. Kreep, 63, was reassigned on Sept. 9 from the downtown San Diego courthouse to a Kearny Mesa facility that handles traffic offenses and small claims. The move came after prosecutors from the City Attorney’s Office began to boycott his courtroom over his legal approach. For instance, Kreep often declined to take away a defendant’s 4th Amendment rights against search and seizure — something prosecutors can legally...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has agreed to curtail future cost-of-living increases for recipients of Social Security and softened his demand for higher taxes at upper income levels as part of accelerating negotiations with House Speaker John Boehner to avoid a "fiscal cliff," people familiar with the talks said Monday. Speaking a few hours after Obama and Boehner met at the White House, these people said the president was now seeking a higher tax rate beginning at incomes over $400,000, up from the levels of $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples that were cornerstones of his successful campaign...

The absurd comment of the week goes to Larry Summer for his statements on the irony of the financial crisis. The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending, it can only be resolved with more confidence, more borrowing and lending, and more spending. Most policy failures in the United States stem from a failure to appreciate this truism... Anyone who thinks the cure is the same as the disease (as Larry Summers clearly does) is incompetent (at best). I found the reference when...

One summary of the Peter Principle, named after psychologist Laurence J. Peters, is that “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence.” Three Italian physicists—Pluchino, Rapisarda, and Garofalo—claim to have put proof to this puzzling problem. Today, we examine their paper, which is making the rounds, and has even won an Ig Nobel! Peter’s perplexing promotional principal runs like this: a vacancy in an organization appears, and somebody in that organization who had heretofore labored somewhere in the lower ranks is elevated to a new eminence. Peter assumes that when people are promoted they will...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (C) talks with Senator Joe Lieberman (L) and Senator Carl Levin after she testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on "Nine Years After 9/11: Confronting the Terrorist Threat to the Homeland" on Capitol Hill in Washington September 22, 2010. U.S. authorities are having a harder time detecting terrorism threats on American soil, top U.S. officials said on Wednesday, more than nine years after the Sept. 11 attacks thrust the United States into a global struggle with Islamist militancy.

Juan Williams — to the amazement of some of his co-panelists — let it rip on Fox News Sunday [1]. The subject was nominally the Sestak and Romanoff scandals, but Williams found the bigger theme: I think the problem here is this is an administration that, as Hillary Clinton famously pointed out, you may not want to have answer the 3:00 a.m. call. These are guys who have tremendous vision about legislative achievements and specific things like health care, going forward on immigration, those difficult issues for America that America so far has failed to deal with. But when it...

Here's a theory about why President Obama is having a tough political time right now: He doesn't seem all that happy being president. ...I started thinking about this a few weeks ago when Obama confidant David Axelrod, noting that the president always makes time for his daughters' recitals and soccer games, told the New York Times, "I think that's part of how he sustains himself through all this." Really? Is the presidency something to sustain yourself through? He did ask for this job; we didn't make him take it. And so it seems fair to ask: What part of it...

Justice Napolitano? The homeland security secretary might just like the ring of it. Janet Napolitano declined to rule out being interested in an appointment to the Supreme Court when she was asked on "FOX News Sunday" about speculation that she might be on the list of potential candidates to replace outgoing Justice David Souter. "I've got my hands full with the flu right now, and I'm just going to stick with that," she said. When host Chris Wallace told Napolitano, "That's a non-answer," she replied: "That's all you're gonna get."

Trillion-dollar deficit? First, I am doubtful when the Old Grey Prostitute tells us about fighting off Great Depression v2.0. That suggests to me that when it does not come, they can bless Bambi for the protection. By setting the mark so high, they set themselves up for kissing the ring of the savior (and asking us to join).

The Chicago Public Schools, whose superintendent, Arne Duncan, has been tapped by President-elect Barack Obama to be the next education secretary, failed to meet the Illinois state standards set under the No Child Left Behind Act every single year the standards have been in force. For the last five school years (2004-2008), the Chicago district (District 299) failed to make “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) in key areas, according to the district’s progress report on the Illinois State Board of Education Web site. Under the No Child Left Behind Act that Congress passed in 2003, each state must “develop and implement...

Obama: Targeting Michelle Was Low GOP Blow Nov. 3, 2008(CBS) CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric caught up with Barack Obama Sunday in Columbus, Ohio, and they sat down for an exclusive interview. Couric asked about reports that an Obama aunt from Kenya may be in the U.S. illegally. Couric also inquired, among other things, about the thing that made Obama the angriest as the campaign unfolded. Portions of the interview were shown on The Early Show Monday, and more will be broadcast in a special Monday edition of the CBS Evening News. Below is a transcript of the portion...